


Anxious as a Wonderful Dream

by thelogicalloganipus (awkwardkermitfrog)



Category: Sanders Sides
Genre: College, College AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-04-28 19:59:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14456658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awkwardkermitfrog/pseuds/thelogicalloganipus
Summary: Logan has something he isn't dealing with. But as he learns as time goes on, your demons follow you wherever you go.





	1. I.

If there was no picture, something Logan could not imagine - if there was truly no picture, no resonance wherein colors would bleed when light hit or reflect off his eyes differing hues into the strange place between thoughts and imagination and facts - then Logan would make one. That was his purpose. 

Each day it seemed that the world was glittering with different things, the edges of shapes and the nuances of blades of grass, and each day he wondered if only he could see it. Each day he wondered if he were special, some kind of undiscovered, quiet genius, lurking in tall library stacks, far away from people he met. 

Conversation could be difficult when nuanced, something Logan did not always understand; little idioms and metaphors seemed to slip through his fingers. Logan wanted to understand always what people were saying, what the little laughs and talks at three am meant, why trips to gas stations fueled on caffeinated fumes were so special and why the sunrise after a night spent awake was something to be treasured. These tinges of light like silk came over him, into his brown eyes and into the reflections of his eyelashes on his glasses and still he shivered and felt tired and did not fully understand where the magic was. It seemed the magic was made by hand, grinding stone back and forth or cutting wood into intricate figurines or smearing color onto stretched cloth canvas. Magic was not something brought by the moon or stars or sunset or sunrise but rather a dreamlike thing, a thing he was constantly longing to touch and feel but never quite grasped before it slipped like water off his skin. The feeling remained, the high of creation, of being the master of a small world, and stayed with him. Sometimes when Logan sat near the large window in the studio and looked out at the rain beyond he felt like he understood what the rain was supposed to feel like. Almost. Almost.

Higher education was meant to expose him to others who saw it too, but there was something strange in the silence in between classes and the conversations at dinner that made him wonder every day if the clinking of forks on plates and the scraping of knives was all he was meant to hear, all he was meant to see. Something unnameable hung heavy in the air, full of possibilities of hope and wonderlust, and he loved every second that it came upon him, every second that he had staring out windows in thoughts lost in hazy sunsets and silver moons. 

Each day felt similar, spent in exhausted haze brushing off cobwebs and spider dust from a tired mind, black coffee slinking down his throat and into a burning stomach. 

“Here is your assignment. What do you think it means?” The professor would say, the drawing of a hand behind her on the chalkboard, looking out curiously at her students for interest and intrigue and intellect. 

What did it mean? What did it mean to weave worlds through painted wood, to create emotion through carving and chisels? Logan pondered this as he walked by the science building, wondering why science was something he longed to love, wondering why something so abstract called to him from the depths of his very human soul. He loved learning about science, but it wasn’t the same as learning about creation. He walked by, drinking hot tea, scalding his tongue, and cursed, dropping another sketchbook, another sheet of paper.

There is something intangible in the perfectionist that they long to reach, a sort of standard that cannot be met by means of man alone. God must intervene here, for it is a place that exists where sunlight meets the tips of raindrops and hovers over dew, where man seeks permission to observe and still yet permission to exist. It was here, between panes of glass and colored paper that Logan seemed to find his existence, where he found a purpose in waking up every morning and leaving the warmth and softness of his bed, where late nights made sense and early mornings did not ravage his creativity. 

Perfectionism is a dangerous, strange place, and, knowing this, Logan, and many other students much like him, made beds and set up tents in which to spend long, harsh winters. It was his purpose, he thought. His reason to be alive. 

When Logan went jogging - as he had taken to doing at three o’clock in the morning when the art building shut its doors and locked him out to force him to rest - he wondered often if the state he was in was much like dreaming, his body moving fluidly, his arms and legs pumping in an effective rhythm. He would jog by the science building and notice their lights on, students hard at work, and envied their suffering. Sometimes he wondered if he stopped just to feel sadness, something that itches and heated his lungs, his heart vibrating loudly, so loudly he was certain that he would be picked up and ticketed for a noise disturbance. He would lay on his back and look out at the stars, breathing heavy, weighted breaths, pulled down towards the earth while gazing at the nighttime sky. He reached up towards it, often, feeling the tips of star stuff on his fingers, reflecting and wondering if the light reached his eyes or if he was looking at deadness, deadness that the earth hadn’t found yet because it was so far away. If you ran away from death long enough, Logan wondered, could it really reach you? He held out his hands and reflected on the chemical structure, looked at charcoal on his fingertips that never washed off, could never be removed, and put it down, feeling human. 

He could understand intricacies of things, of how they were made, and this made him a detailed and meticulous student. Tiny, tiny houses drawn onto plates of copper, little bits of wood taken out by sharpened metal teeth to try and make a new, soft thing. Swirling clouds found their way out of Logan’s fingers and brushed across blue and pink printed skies, dreamlike landscapes coming from thick, sleepless nights, making their way onto cold pressed cream colored paper. Sometimes when the nights were especially sleepless Logan wondered what glass feels like when it breaks, what ceramic splinters do when they’re separated from plates and what it feels like to be separated from your sense of self. He looked at his coffee cup lazily and realized he didn’t like to think about it.

Movement en masse was the one thing Logan couldn’t understand. When there was a dance, a strange social thing his roommate insisted he attend, he found himself far away from the army of fat and sweaty bodies, not moving his feet or his hands, not tapping his fingers, feeling frigid in the heat of the gymnasium. Everything felt too loud, beads of sweat hitting the floor with the violence of a drum, feet pounding up and down, people on people, skin and hearts and hair tangled in a mass of something unsafe Logan didn’t quite understand, didn’t know if he wanted to understand. 

“What are you doing up against the wall all by yourself?”

The voice came as a surprise to Logan, who was careful not to jump, and looked at the speaker with hesitation. The voice was friendly, probably male, from someone who was about his height, auburn hair freckled over pale skin. He looked at the speaker, the uncertain stretch of lips across his face, the swelling of cheeks and indent of dimples, and considered him a curious spectacle, glasses and all.

“I do not like dances.” Logan answered, looking back across the dance floor. “I am too awkward to dance. I would make a fool of myself.”

“That’s alright. I’m awkward too.” 

Logan chuckled and considered that if cats really did grin like the cheshire auburn freckled man beside him it would be a disturbing scene indeed. 

The two stood there, not speaking, for a long time. Small things that had felt public before suddenly felt private. A scratch against a thigh, the sense of body odor, felt pressing. Logan listened the voice in his head and was paralyzed by it, staying instead there with the brick wall up against his back, scratching against a black shirt and into the middle of the skin near his hip.

He stayed there, next to the auburn student in the blue shirt, feeling the brick against his back, the red dust scratching its way into his insides and making him wonder if he was bleeding just a little. He stayed there with him because being without him was scarier than being alone entirely, scarier than leaving and walking past the dance floor and the calamity of loud music and liquid sweat and pulsing feet and heavy bodies. 

The student’s name was odd.

Patton.

“Like pathos.” Logan mused to himself, looking at a number in his cellphone, little black letters surrounded by light blue light. He pocketed the device and looked around his room and wondered about the acquaintance who’d stood there, by the way, speaking occasionally and not minding if Logan didn’t speak back. 

Over time Logan found himself gravitating towards his phone and towards the number, towards the possibility of embarrassing personal conversation. Let’s have coffee - that’s what the student had said to him when he’d left the dance early, escorted out by nerves. It’ll be fun, he said, attempting to be social, attempting to draw Logan out of his wallpaper of comfortable introversion. 

Logan looked out across the great expanse that was campus through the large window of the art building and saw students walking together, in pairs and clusters, and found his feet tapping slightly to the beat of the music in the room next door. 

The pull towards his phone was gravitational, a weight when Logan had been running, heavy with fatigue, muscles filled with lactic acid, a hard hitting of feet on pavement. Logan found himself stopping, collapsing with his hands on his knees, breathing heavily, looking out at the stars and the expanse and trying to find where it stopped and he started. He looked at the tinges of light, small reflections and shadows cast by the soft glow of street lamps, and felt himself get out his phone and send a text.

_ Coffee Tuesday? _

He saw it send before he processed it, saw it appear before he registered what he was doing. Logan considered himself asocial, selective, choosing who saw the dust on the curtains of his little house and keeping the closets locked. There were nothing but coats in there, moth eaten red and black clothes that Logan found himself locking away and neglecting, the mold from the closets invading his walls and creeping up the piping. It was better, he thought, to attack the mold that grew outside, better than opening the door and feeling the cold and dust hit his nostrils, better than wearing a gas mask just to breathe. He kept it neat. He kept it tidy. He ignored the growing things on the white washed walls.

A sketch could take one, two, ten, eleven - Logan lost count when he reached sixty - tries to perfect. It was important that the sketch be perfect, sometimes even more perfect than the end product itself, as students gathered around to critique each other's’ ideas in the fluorescent lamps of the art building hallway. Finished products were not allowed to be imperfect, but there was something about the discussion of an idea that was more intimidating than the idea’s execution. Artificial light always seemed strange to Logan in a building where students were meant to be their most authentic selves, their most raw and natural and - Logan hesitated to think about it - real. They gathered in groups of five and twelve and praised each other for ideas that Logan couldn’t pretend to wrap his mind around. Pretentious students who knew how smart they were, goggling at each other, arrogant and pleased with themselves would stand in front of the class and explain their sketches in more detail than Logan found necessary. 

“I find that the eye is the window to the soul, so I have sketched here a house where eyes lead into small houses. It’s a metaphor for how we can be closed off sometimes, you know? Like how things can be cold inside of people, so I’m going to make the eyes blue, but the reflection of the house- houses, I guess - inside the eyes yellow, because I want it to seem good.” 

Logan rolled his eyes at the explanation, thumbing his jeans, saying nothing. It was well established here that true constructive criticism was rarely given without some encouragement alongside, something to sweeten the taste of defeat. Words were different things than pictures. It was something Logan had decided a long time ago, having found that he could create things that, in the words of one of his favorite painters, he “had no words for”. The weaving of words belonged, to him, somewhere inside his head, not out here on display for others to pick apart and weave their narratives into. He retreated, as he usually did, into the bricks of the walls, fading into cream colored paint and motor and electrical sockets until it was his turn to be pulled away from his tired thoughts and into something they told him was real. 

“Which sketch is yours, Logan?”

Logan gestured to a drawing of a young woman in a field - a sketch that had taken him forty tries - and nearly winced at the thought of how much paper, how much in the weight of trees, he had spent drawing it. 

“Okay, so… what is it going to be?”

Logan swallowed. He felt something crawl down his throat, over his Adam’s apple, stretching itself through his warm esophagus and then his hot stomach and then his cold extremities, his fingertips and nails, his nerve endings and toes. Something else spoke outside of him, using his voice, much like being in a dream where he couldn’t feel his lips moving. 

“I wanted to draw the outside in. Here I have taken a figure and placed her in a field, where she gazes at the viewer, pulling them from the outside of the picture and then into herself.”

There was murmuring from somewhere else; Logan found his nose moved, his eyes blinked, his pulse jolted now and again, his fingers twitched and his shoulders shivered. The murmuring was pleasant, allowing Logan to pull back into himself, back to where his mouth was in his control. He could not find it in his throat to speak again.


	2. II.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patton is introduced.
> 
> Warnings: a kiss happens that Patton isn't totally okay with. Depersonalization feelings throughout the story. Some sexual thoughts, some sexual imagery, some repression of sexual thoughts and fantasies.

Patton was laying in his bed staring at the ceiling when it came to him- he had no idea what the most beautiful word, or phrase, in the English language was. He traced his fingers up the wall, thinking, frowning because of the uncertainty. It was something so subjective, so nuanced, that there didn’t seem to be a way that he could quite place it. His fingers scritched the wallpaper and he hummed softly, wondering about the different ways it could be strung together, how they could float around him and he would sink through the sounds, eyes closed, falling into something like a dream. 

Poetry could be like word salad, nonsense threaded into the fabric of sound, lightly playing through his headphones as he laid back, listening to different inflections pressed into the plaster of the English language. He loved listening to the differences between poetry and how he spoke regularly almost as much as he loved listening to Button Poetry, hearing a powerful message conveyed through surreal, artistic language. Something about poetry always struck him as special. It felt more unique to him than prose, and in a way, more real. He hated that there wasn’t a better word to him than  _ real _ , but there it was - poetry was real. There were moods that did not have language, only grasps at its roots, and Patton longed to plan the roots of his own head onto the pages of his diary. He would sit there, penning words over and over, trying to think like the great poets and weave worlds together in stanza after stanza. After a while he would smear the words on his hand intentionally and become frustrated, rubbing the edges of his palms together vigorously and dropping spots of ink on his mattress. He crumpled the papers up, shaking his head, unsure about trying again.

Poetry was special to listen to, different to write. It was something Patton thought constantly about, letting voices echo between his ears, bouncing around his thoughts and planting seeds of idea after idea in a way prose could not. At night he would sit up in bed, phone sliding off his lap, words echoing through the silence of his eardrums, and he would find tears on his cheeks or laughter on his lips, just from the different ways in which words could be said. He loved that.

Prose was different. Patton felt strange that he couldn’t think of a better word, a more descriptive word, than  _ different _ . In some ways, it was just as beautiful as poetry, words flowing over each other in different ways, toppling together into a massive heap. Entire pages used to describe Mrs. Dalloway’s thoughts about the flowers, simple sentences used to deliver the reader truths about death and delight found in the end of grief. Prose was heavier, concrete. It was something Patton could feel in his hands and hold in his fingers, letters slipping between the cracks of his hands and toppling to his feet. Poetry was ethereal, floating, soft light breaking through the window and lighting up the backs of his brown eyes, illuminating his expressions. 

Patton hated to admit it, but sometimes he didn’t understand what prose was trying to say to him. He had to start at the top of a page and focus on the words, whispering to himself, trying to make sense of where the tops and bottoms of the story were. He shook his head and refused to shut the book, wondering why words jumped from one line to another, why he would find himself reading the same sentence over and over. It seemed that sometimes his mind would wander and he would begin at the new paragraph feeling distant, reading without reading, words slipping like light between his fingers. Eventually he would sigh and close the book, dog- earing the page - a habit his mother hated - and wonder about what had just happened. 

Patton's’ favorite part of reading was finding a narrator to think like. After a day of reading from a book, he found that his thoughts and moods would begin to reflect the words on the page. It was like watching television and memorizing someone’s voice without knowing you did, suddenly hearing them voice the thoughts you had to yourself, seemingly at home in your mind. Suddenly he would be making coffee, the voice of the local news anchor barking at him that he was adding cream and sugar. Memorizing voices, even voices he couldn’t physically hear, was always something Patton greatly enjoyed. He loved it because he would find new ways to say things and wonder how the voice in his head would have described his breakfast. He bit down on toast, the voice of a familiar individual on YouTube echoing.

“Let’s talk about breakfast and just jump into it. Now the first thing we’re gonna eat today is bread that’s been burnt, butter spread on it to make it palatable. Have you ever wondered why it is that once we spread something on burnt bread it suddenly becomes delicious? I’m not sure what the name of this effect is, but humans have been cooking food for thousands of years, taking things that would have been hard to digest and breaking them down with heat. That said - man, this toast is burnt, and it doesn’t really make sense that we burn something that was already cooked in order to put something on it, now, does it? Does burning food improve the taste? Some people think so…”

The voice would trail off, Patton not paying too much attention as it narrated his actions throughout the morning, putting coffee into the small machine that sat on top of the mini fridge, missing the toaster back at home. There was not much in the way of food in a dorm room and it felt used and impersonal without touches like a toaster. He would lean back, listening to the buzzing in his head, tired brown eyes watching the percolation of the pot and close his mind to everything but the smell and taste of spring morning.

He would then nudge his roommate at precisely 6:55, shaking his shoulder and hearing him groan, smiling down as the young man looked at him through slits.

“I made coffee.” Patton said happily, voice soft and quiet. 

“Cool.” His roommate Patrick would bury his head in the pillow, and Patton would mouth the familiar words along with him. “Five more minutes.” 

Patton would pour out a cup, leaving room for creamer, and open the door as quietly as he could. As he left, he could hear Patrick stirring, finally rising. Sometimes he heard the coffee mug bounce against the desk, signifying that his roommate had resigned himself to another long day of university.

“Good morning Emily!” Patton called, racing down the spiral staircase.

“Mmm.” She gave a small wave and yawned as he raced past her.

“Good morning lobby!” Patton waved at the janitor who was vacuuming the abandoned area, hopping backwards, grinning. “Good morning Mrs. Laurent!”

“Good morning, chipper boy.” Mrs. Laurent replied in a thick French accent, barely louder than the sweeper.

Patton gripped his backpack on his shoulders, adjusting the weight of education against his sturdy spine, and found his feet carrying him towards the dining hall, moving automatically to food and conversation. He wasn’t paying attention to the soreness in his neck or the sound of the feet around him, but rather to the conversations, to the different ways people spoke to one another. It seemed that Patton could close his eyes and feel conversation as solid as the air itself, swishing around him and making him shiver. He didn’t speak but smiled, didn’t frown but waved, as he skipped his way through the growing crowds at the top of the hall, placing his backpack against a wall and patting it for safekeeping. 

He closed his eyes, listening to the small trails of conversation, weaving their way in and out of the forest of thoughts and cleverness.

“...did you hear about Tracy? Yeah she said that she was gonna get back to you…”

“What about graves, though? Aren’t they ridiculous? I don’t wanna be buried.”

“I don’t see why they can’t serve scrambled eggs.”

“It’s too fucking early for coffee.”

“I wish I did something easier, like brush my teeth. Wait, did I… wait, oh no.”

He didn’t speak with them, putting his backpack at the top of the dining commons on its own little hook, but instead smiled at the inflections of words, the tones, the ways in which people spoke. Sometimes someone would say hi to him directly and Patton would start a conversation with a stranger, each of them eventually parting ways towards their dorms’ eating areas, waving ask they walked away. He loved that.

The library was another special place. 

It seemed to Patton that there could not be a large enough collection of words to house all the thoughts in his head, let alone in the world. Instead of attempting to house every word that English could contain, or every combination of sentence that there was, the library stopped at two floors of books. A spiral staircase went up the middle, and also down, suggesting that more books downstairs. Patton had ventured down there once but discovered only art on the walls and offices, much to his dismay. That had been before the assigned reading had started and there was still an idea that sleep was a needless commodity. 

The best part of the library, though, was the little crevice under the spiral stairs. Patton found that he could open up his laptop there and listen as classes got out, hearing students chatter about the public details of their lives. As groups of students walked by, voices chiming with high pitched laughter and giggles that spoke of a world outside of college, where the stress was less and restful sleep was abundant. No one bothered him as he typed away, working on paper after paper, spreading out his sources around and behind him, taking notes and writing (mostly) in pencil on both his personal papers and rented textbooks. 

“What are you doing over here?” 

Patton looked up to see a young man staring at him, gaunt cheeks sucked in, expression confused. For a moment the two stared at each other, startled at the other’s existence in what seemed a private space.

“I’m people listening.” Patton answered.

“You’re what?” The student asked, sitting down next to his papers.

“I’m people listening. I like to work here because I get to hear what people are saying as they walk by. You’re not supposed to talk in a library, but people are talkative here. Especially between three and five.” Patton replied. 

The stranger looked thoughtful, chewing on his cheek absently. “So it’s like people watching.” 

“Yeah, sort of.” Patton smiled.

The stranger held out his hand. “I’m Jake.”

“Patton.” 

The two shook hands and Patton noticed immediately how cold and bony the stranger’s hand was in his own warmer, chubbier palm. He pulled back. 

“What’s your major?” Jake asked, taking off a large backpack. It set on the ground with a soft thud, signifying that it held something expensive.

“English.” Patton held up a textbook cover which displayed the words  _ Stream Of Consciousness: How To Think Through The Mind _ . “Yours?”

“Graphic design.” Jake answered.

“Cool! So you’re really good at art then?” Patton asked, smiling at the stranger. He immediately wondered if Jake would be willing to draw him.

“I’m good with digital stuff. I could never do some of the other things the 2D and 3D people do. I do have to take drawing and sculpture at some point but I’ll probably get Cs in those classes.” Patton watched as Jake talked, fidgeting the whole time, gesturing this way and that, observing his energy. “There are students who I swear never sleep. That can’t be good, right? I mean it can’t be good for your brain. One girl when I tell her to sleep, she just looks at me really sadly. It’s sad. It makes me sad, you know?”

“They should sleep.” Patton thought about his own restless nights, agitation fueled by excessive coffee and coca cola. “If they can. I guess.”

“I dunno, with some of the stuff they have to do?” Jake shrugged. “Wait, why do you sit here, where it’s quiet, and not the student union, where people talk all the time? That’s where I people watch - not people listen. I watch.”

“All my resources are here.” Patton replied. He tapped his fingers quickly and became still again. “I like it there too, though. Wanna go to the union and get some coffee?”

The two walked together with overstuffed backpacks and shivering shoulders, passing by other students on walkways, observing the cooling weather and changing leaves. Occasionally Patton would chase a leaf, his laughter ringing in Jake’s ears as he moved to stomp on it, the small brittle thing crunching under his sneaker. It felt satisfying to chase down, and Patton found his heart jittering before they had even ordered their coffee - something he wasn’t sure either of them needed.

School events were things Patton often got excited about. It felt good to be near where skin touched skin, where feet walked next to feet and where the world seemed weighted, solid. Long ago he had read that the best way to engage with things was to be fully present as they happened; as a result, Patton often found himself trying to observe everything going on around him at once, unable to get into a headspace where he could compose his thoughts. It wasn’t unpleasant. He enjoyed feeling the things around him, touching walls as he walked by with the tip of his finger, trying to think of how he would describe the couple having an argument nearby. The girl, he thought, had small but beautiful eyes, defined features, a round face and a livelihood in her rosy cheeks. The boy was thinner, paler, less interested in what she had to say, dipping his fingers in splenda and licking it off the edges, sucking the manufactured sweetness out with his tongue. Patton watched them, longing to write a paragraph, instead writing something like a poem: 

_ Her jaw moved and he watched. He watched and looked away. His mind was elsewhere. My mind went there too. We stood there together, not facing each other. I did not face her. She walked away from me before I could find her again. _

He closed his laptop, frustrated with himself for a lack of ingenuity, for not feeling inspired as the student at the next table who was sketching people sitting alone. Charcoal covered his hands and Patton couldn’t help smiling at the bits of it on his face. He seemed distracted by something in his head, and the longer Patton watched him, the more he felt he was invading a secret space.

He looked across the student union to see Jake chatting with a girl, a pretty brunette thing wearing tight clothing with a narrow face. It was a common occurrence to see Jake with a different girl, buying her a latte, never actually asking her on a date but making her think he thought the world of her for a few hours. Patton watched as their hands brushed, brushing his own hands together, hearing friction on flesh. He considered the girl and wondered about her, wondered if she and Jake were going to explore each other’s bodies later. He closed his mind to the thought but not before picturing himself and the girl in the back of a car, sweaty and without much room to breathe, her hair in his face, neither looking at the other, eyes closed in ecstacy. He shook his head, flooded with guilt at the pleasure at the fantasy. He got up to walk out of the building, heart hammering, feeling suddenly self conscious, and did not wave hello.

Patton’s mind ticked in class with the clock, humming along, trying to write down everything the professor said. His thoughts whirred along tight ropes between topics, balancing here, falling there. More than once he found himself writing separate thoughts in the margins of his notes, sometimes for the entirety of the class period, passing time by writing his own little stories, drawing small houses and doodling spiral flowers. He would look up and realize that he hadn’t taken in a word and begin to scribble, frustrated, making a note to himself in angry, capital letters: READ THE CHAPTER LATER. GET NOTES FROM TIM.

He slung his backpack over his shoulder and let out a heavy sigh, wondering where his mind was, why he had began to have trouble catching up to it. Fingers walking along the wall and down the banister as he went down the stairs of the science building, where creative writing classes were held, he found himself wondering what his hand was walking on, and where to. It was a little side adventure down the stairs and away from the anger he felt towards himself. Could his fingers go on a great quest, rescuing a maiden, defeating a dragon made of hands? Perhaps there was a witch somewhere who would grant his fingers speed, a potion to make them grow, a castle for them to climb- 

“Patton! Hey!” 

Patton turned around to see a classmate from Writing 100, a girl with a lovely button nose, freckles rimming blue eyes and brown eyebrows. He smiled, adjusting the backpack, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Hey, Sophie. What’s up?”

“There’s this big school dance coming up. Like. It’s supposed to be huge.” Patton watched Sophie as she rubbed her hands together, freckles darkening and face turning red. “And I was wondering if, you know, if you were going with anyone. As ‘they’ say.” 

“Oh.” Patton smiled, mind suddenly blank. He felt his hands begin to sweat and tried to ignore them, gripping his backpack more tightly. “Do you mean like, as in a date? A  _ date _ date?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Sophie’s face was happy, but her tone was nervous. “If you want to.”

“Yeah. Sure!” Patton grinned, watching as Sophie’s face lit up. “I’d love to.”

“You sure?” She asked, jaw dropping. “I mean - really?”

Patton nodded, smiling, and watched as Sophie squealed and walked away, grinning wildly, throwing her hands in the air. He felt his cheeks flush and walked down the hallway after her, thinking about the way she smiled, the way she moved, the curve of her hips as she walked. He walked down the hall in the other direction, away from where he needed to be, and found himself smiling openly, waving at people walking by, careless. It was three hours before Patton realized he had no idea when the dance was, what he was supposed to wear, or even what Katie’s phone number happened to be.

He did not told her he’d never been asked out before.

Music was something Patton wanted to understand desperately. It pulsed through his feet and took his arms and legs, moving them up and down, making him dance, making him laugh. In high school, prom was something Patton never attended, unsure of who to ask, how to overcome the flushing of his cheeks and stop stumbling over the question. Here he felt Sophie’s hips bump into his, watched her face light up when he pulled her into him, his own heart feeling jittery against his ribs. He closed his eyes and swayed, holding her, unsure of what he wanted to feel when she was around. Patton had read many romances, many poems about love, about how the heart fluttered and the feeling was pleasant and light. He felt intoxicated by the dance, the beat of the music around him, the sound of breathing and the flicker of colored lights. He looked down at her head and saw her looking up at him, giving him a look he had never seen before, glancing down at his lips. Before he could say anything there in the sea of sweaty bodies and flashing lights he felt her lips press into his, gently, and for a moment his breathing stopped.

Later, talking along the wall with a student who seemed uninclined to join the dance, Patton found himself elsewhere. He spoke of simple things, distracting himself from shaking hands, his mind filled with the thought that he’d had his first kiss. His very first kiss. Such an intimate thing, right there in front of everyone on the dance floor, right in the mixture of bouncing feet and sweaty students. His mouth tingled and he found himself biting his lip from time to time without thinking, mind split between the moment and the kiss. He looked out into the crowd of bodies to see Sophie making her way towards him, waving, and suddenly found a smile had put itself on his face. He offered the student his number, offered to trade him coffee for conversation, smiling as he walked away. He then went back into the crowd, listening to all the sounds, closing his eyes and feeling, distantly, her body next to his. Somehow, he felt his body move next to hers, rhymically, laughing.  _ This is what it’s supposed to feel like, _ he told himself.  _ This is what I’m supposed to feel. _


	3. III.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is short. No warnings, but it is the beginning of a depression spiral. And the next chapter is much longer. So I hope that makes up for it.

Something was pulling at the weight of his body, dragging him upwards from the heavy undertow of sleep. He shook his head and rolled over, lulling in and out of consciousness, hand reaching to shut off the sound that pulled him from a dream he’d already forgotten. He shut it off with a flick of his finger and laid there, staring at his dresser with blurred vision, not thinking or feeling. The blanket could have weighed a thousand pounds; it could have pushed him through the bed and through the floor, straight down into the foundation of the building and below, and he would not have felt a thing until he’d been suffocated by the earth. He closed his eyes and laid on his back, staring at the bunk above, one arm raised above his head, sighing softly. It seemed there were important things to attend to, important things to be awake for, but his body wouldn’t move. It laid there, sinking away from him as he rose above himself and fell back into the blankets, dreaming of something he could not name.

Logan closed his eyes and wondered about skipping class, about what would happen, what he would miss. Today was the day they were starting their stippling project, something he had looked forward to. A few days prior, he had mapped out a grid on a large sheet of thick paper, careful to draw the lines delicately onto its smooth, hot pressed surface; it seemed to him that when he leaned down and looked at it closely, without his glasses, the world became clearer than it had ever been. He looked closely at his hand and saw bits of light reflecting off of tiny ridges, imperfections in skin that his glasses blinded him to. Bits of light reflected gently off of his fingernails and he blinked, examining everything as closely as he could. What if there was no skin to separate him from what was inside? He felt that he could have split himself open and nothing would come out, that air would escape and he would deflate to nothingness. 

Above him, he felt his roommate stir and step down from the bed, careful to only step on the edge of the wood next to Logan’s head. Logan watched as his roommate paused, looking at him, but did not stop to ask why he was still in his bed. A moment later, the door swung open and shut, leaving Logan alone in the early light of day to listen to the morning doves and the sounds of students going about their day. Each one had their own complicated life, personality, ambitions; each one was an individual as unique as the one they spoke to in the hallway or talked to while walking down the stairs. Logan laid there for a long time, simply staring at the blank wall as the sun rose up behind him, considering the different possibilities of the people around him. It seemed to him that everyone else understood the intricacies of socialization. He felt himself an outsider, washed clumsily along the shore and begrudgingly accepted into the society that was already there. He didn’t belong with them, in that bed, listening to the day begin; he belonged somewhere that had no name, that had no face to show him, no voice to speak with on its own.

Pens and paints and colors spoke to him, that much he knew. There was something warm inside him that burned brightly. It radiated from him onto pages and pages of sketchbooks and created strange, twisted things he could not name. He wondered if they were like bones, the sorts of bones that you could not see, that held things together and held the sky up from the ground. He rolled over, onto his back, and stared at the bunk above him, tracing his fingers between the wooden boards and thinking that if it fell on him, right then, perhaps he would be alright with sleeping a little while longer. 

For a moment, he considered sleeping a while longer than that. 

And a while longer than that, still.

And longer than he could comprehend.

He rolled over to his side and closed his eyes, suddenly overcome with fatigue, and quickly fell asleep.


	4. IV.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman is introduced. 
> 
> Warnings: This chapter discusses the development of an eating disorder and is based on both my own experiences with bulimia and the experiences of someone close to me. It can be triggering for persons with eating disorders, and I want you to be aware of that before you walk into it. 
> 
> Originally this chapter was going to be longer, but it seemed I had reached a good pausing point. I hope you enjoy.

When Roman was five years old his best friend invited him to accompany her family to The Nutcracker. Seated there next to his best friend, giggling and watching the dancers, he wondered what it was like to be a creature on the stage. How do you spin on the edge of a pin, your toes, nothing but muscles and air suspending you? He stretched his legs, his toes, picturing moving, bounding gracefully along the stage. He turned to Katie and whispered to her about how he wanted to go to ballet class with her, asking if she could dance on her toes like the porcelain figures on stage. She laughed at him and then covered her mouth, looking at the stern older faces around them, trying to hide herself. 

“I wish! But I’m the best girl in my class, I’m the only one who can do the splits though.” Katie answered, still giggling, covering her face. 

“Wow, you can do the splits?” Roman asked, still trying to whisper, suddenly in awe. “That’s so cool!”

“Yeah! I bet you could too. I can teach you.” She answered, pulling her sweater over her small hands. 

“Shh!” 

The lights went up and the dancers bowed and everyone stood and clapped, filled with the euphoria of the theater. Roman clapped with them, hooting and hollering with Katie, whistling excitedly. He tried to think of a big word to describe how it felt to watch them but came up with nothing that made sense, nothing that felt right. He had no idea what the story was but the combination of the music and the lights and the costumes was enough that he went home and, a few days later, asked his parents if he could be in a play.

“You want to be in a play?” His father asked. “What on earth do you want to do a fruity thing like that for? Your best friend is a girl. Just play with her.”

“George.” His mother shot his father a look that Roman was familiar with and turned back to his bright, hopeful eyes. “You can be in a play if you can get past the audition. Then, the director will cast you. But being in a play is really hard. You have to memorize all your lines and pretend to be someone else. Do you think you can do that?”

“Yeah!” Roman nodded, pleased. “I can do that.”

His father scoffed, shaking his head as he changed the channel on the television. “They laugh at boys who do plays and play with girls. Don’t cry to me when they laugh at you.”

“George!” His mother looked at him again, this time with a bit of anger. “There’s no need to talk like that.”

“He can pretend stuff here at home without us driving him all over the place. That’s all I’m saying. Or join a baseball team.” His father said with a shrug. He turned to his son and tousled his hair lightly. “You’re king of your room. Okay, Roman?” 

Roman nodded. “Okay dad.” He stood there, twiddling his thumbs, watching his father go back to the television screen. “But I’m the prince, actually.”

“Right. You’re the prince.” His father nodded, not looking at him. 

In his room Roman would spend hours making forts with his stuffed animals, assigning them roles to play in his kingdom. He towered over them on his bunk bed and swung his legs down the ladder, hanging off the metal bars and whooping, a construction paper crown on his head. He fell backwards off the bars, intentionally, and felt little plastic eyes and noses hit his back and butt, surrounding him in security.

“The king is very glad that you have caught me, brave knights.” He would tell them, sitting up, making a hole to the floor. His bear, Lafcadio, looked at him and Roman laughed dramatically, clutching his chest as he’d seen someone do on television.

“Dear Lafcadio, fear not! A prince is expected to play. I do still attend my lessons.” He gestured wildly to his bookshelf, which was full of fiction. “Why, let me recite you one of my lessons and prove that I am smart!”

He stood up, stepping over the army of bears, rabbits, and other things, and pulled a book off the shelf at random, opening to a page and beginning to shout, “All hail the prince, for he is the bravest of them all! He defeated the dragon witch, he found the princess in the castle, he will lead the-”

“Roman!” 

Roman looked up, snapped out of his fantasy at his mother, who was crossing her arms in the doorway. She wrung her hands and looked at the mass of things on the floor, shaking her head. He watched as she chewed her lip, seemingly distracted. 

“Daddy’s very tired. Can you play a little quieter?” She asked softly, eyebrows furrowing a bit. Roman didn’t like it when her eyebrows did that. It made her forehead wrinkle, reminding him that she would grow old, and he disliked the idea that she would get old. 

“Sorry.” He put the book down, looking now at the title -  _ A Complete History of Birds  _ \- and at the ground, where the magic of childhood seemed far away again. “Will you play with me?”

Many afternoons were spent in Roman’s room, building forts, reading books, being tickled by his mother. He would laugh when she lifted up his shirt and blew raspberries into his belly, making him squeal with delight. He would try find spots that made his mother laugh - her armpits, her feet - but nothing ever seemed to work. She would sit there, smiling a little, but would never laugh, turning instead to attack him, leaving him in a fit of giggles. 

His father would walk by sometimes and see them together. He would say, “Don’t you think he’s getting a little pudgy?” To which his mother would scoff at her husband as he left them, rolling her eyes.

“What does that mean?” Roman asked one night as his mother dished him some pasta for dinner. 

“Nothing.” His mother shook her head. “Nothing you need to worry about, anyway. Now go get your father for dinner.”

Roman was on the playground in second grade when he first heard the word directed at him -  _ fat _ . It was said to him with a point and a laugh, without a second thought. He looked down at his stomach, his legs, away from the bully who was walking away to play on some monkey bars. In the bathroom mirror that night he looked at himself with his shirt off, feeling distressed at his stomach, poking it gently and examining himself from all angles. “Pudgy.” He muttered, understanding. He swallowed, listening to the bathtub fill up, suddenly afraid to see his naked legs inside the water.

“Katie?” Roman hung down by his legs on what they called the spider web, looking up at her, holding his shirt over his stomach. 

“Mm?” 

“Am I fat?” He pulled himself up, squeezing between the triangular bars, and looked at her undeniably thin face. 

“Oh, Roman! Who cares if you’re fat?” Katie slid between the bars easily, and reached up, grabbing his foot. “Tag!” 

Later that night, taking his bath, he realized she hadn’t said no.

On the playground, Roman found himself called  _ fat _ more and more often and by more and more kids. Friends, seemingly at random, made jokes about him trying to push the merry-go-round or go down the slide. He began to ask his mother for bigger sweatshirts, something to cover up the thing that felt out of his control. In his kingdom in his room, Roman was in charge of everything but his body. He swung from his ladder to the ground and landed with a thud before looking in the mirror and feeling wholly, completely disappointed with what he saw. Eventually his mother asked why there was a blanket on the mirror. Roman said it was to keep ghosts out. 

During recess he often hid under a wooden train, a place where few other kids bothered going because of the spiders that lived there, and read books or traced pictures in the dirt. He looked at his fingers, his hands, and cried, wondering, How anyone could hate their own hands? He would wipe away his tears and shake his head, pulling his father’s borrowed sweater over his legs, curling up into a ball. 

“What are you doing down here? There’s spiders.” 

Roman looked over at Katie, sniffling, wiping snot away with his sleeve, embarrassed at the dark marks the moisture left on his sweatshirt. “I’m not afraid of spiders.”

Katie crawled over next to him, hugging her scrawny knees to her chest, looking thoughtful. She chewed her hair a moment and tilted her head sideways, looking at Roman as he looked at the dirt. “You know what my mom says about bullies?” 

“I’m not afraid of bullies.” Roman muttered. He lifted up his fingers and squished a solitary blade of grass between them, watching it break apart. “I just like it down here.”

Katie ignored him. “My mom says bullies are just meanies who have nothing better to do than make people unhappy. They’re losers.” 

“Hmm.” Roman pulled his sweatshirt further over his body, crawling into it. 

“And you’re not a loser.” Katie went to crawl out of the space, looking back at him. “Now come on, get out of here before we get in trouble because the teachers think we’re frenching.” 

Roman frowned and began to crawl out after her. “Why would they it matter if we were speaking French? I don’t know French.” 

“No, silly - you kiss and touch tongues.” Katie giggled, a high pitched squeal of pure delight. 

“Oh, gross!” Roman stuck out his tongue, shaking his head. “That’s so gross! Why would anyone do that?” 

Katie blushed as she continued to laugh, leading him over to a pair of abandoned swings, where the two pumped their legs until they were high in the air and far away from the things that made spiders seem like friends. Up in the air, he felt light. In the air, he felt himself laugh again.

A strange ritual of disconnect began to take place each night, a split between Roman and the mirror. He looked at himself each night in his reflection and felt disconnected from the figure, far away from the person in front of him. He reached forward and pushed on the mirror, hard, leaving marks with his fingers and sometimes with his nose. It seemed that there was another Roman in the reflection, just out of reach; another Roman living a similar life, taking his baths at the same time, just barely separated from him by the space of the mirror. If he could reach out and fall through the looking glass he could connect himself to what was there, to the brown eyes he saw and the freckles on his nose, to the little twitches of his lips and the hairs of his eyelashes. He pressed forward, standing on the bathroom counter as the tub filled up, not noticing when the water began to flow over the edge, not noticing that it had run cold. He reached up and touched his face and smacked it to see the red rise up in his skin, to know he was there. There was too much fat on his face, he thought. Too much flesh held by his skin.

Breakfasts were frozen waffles plopped into the toaster while Roman waited on tiptoe by the counter, peanut butter and syrup ready. It was the smell of his mother as she walked around behind him, readying herself a cup of coffee, looking for her fat-free creamer as she made herself a breakfast smoothie. It was cereals and whole milk eaten from a blue bowl in front of the daily news, already dressed, his mother talking to him as she busied herself with makeup and, as she put it, look presentable. It was early morning toast with butter spread onto delicious white bread and letting bread crunch in his mouth, the oil at the corners of his mouth, crumbs running down his shirt and onto the floor. Breakfast was reserved for his mother, getting ready for school with her, talking about the weird dreams he’d had and the things happening in his kingdom. 

Cookouts and restaurants were his father’s domain. He would stand there with Roman and show him how to properly grill a steak, a burger, a hotdog. “This is what men eat.” He would say it with pride and flip the steak over, grinning down at Roman as their guests began to arrive, tousling his hair. Meats, steaks, and starches were reserved for his father, his father telling him how to cut a steak, how to properly cook a hotdog, how it would toughen him up. Roman would hold the meat out in front of him and chew it slowly, looking at his father the whole time, watching him nod and smile with approval. 

Hungry was something strange and foreign, something lonely. Hungry was going to the kitchen in the middle of the night and eating all the pudding cups and crying alone on the floor at what he’d done, stuffing the containers into the trash can as quickly as possible and hiding under his blankets and stuffed animals. It was a third slice of pizza after his father had shook his head when he’d eaten a second one, feeling his stomach bloat and stretch. It was betting his babysitter he could eat a whole loaf of bread and doing it, right in front of her, more out of spite than out of need. Hungry was crying in the middle of the night alone, burying his face in Lafcadio to muffle the sound of the words echoing in his head. Hungry was being left all alone. 

And Roman did not want to be alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments feed my motivation to keep writing this.

**Author's Note:**

> This is different in style from what I've written before. I hope you guys enjoy it.


End file.
